The concept of sensor journalism offers revolutionary insights to fact finding and story telling. It's amazing that something like an elementary level science experiment and can produce usable data for professional writing and information consumption. 
For example, the simple bread board circuit that we got to build in class I'm fairly certain I had learned how to build in fifth grade. It was nothing more than than a technical game of battleship, placing small chips, wires, capacitors, buzzers, a battery, and a few other things into alignment to produce a tool that could measure conductivity in water. 
Sure, building and getting the thing to work was challenging, but that's science. Once it did work, we had a way to go out in to the world and collect data first hand that we otherwise would not have the easiest access to. Measuring the sound waves from the buzzer gave us not only a primary source of information to use when story telling, but a way to monitor local government and play watchdog, which is also our responsibility. If we were to find a sample of water with conductivity off the charts, that's a giant red flag and should be investigated further.
With this information, it can be further tested by taking any samples and your sensor's findings to a lab for more definitive answers. The great thing is that when it comes to the journalism aspect of this idea, the possibilities of stories can advance a great deal. Reporting could be done, for example, on the initial findings and hypothesis with some words from those directly effected. Then there could be reporting done on any action taken up with local, state, or even federal government or any institution that may have helped cause the problem. If the samples go to a lab reporting could be done on the lab results in comparison with those from the first test. If the government or institution doesn't respond to the requests to change action then reporting could be done there as well. 
Patrick Herron of the Mystic River Watershed Association , who was nice enough to come speak to our class, explained how the MyRWA uses their sensor technology to monitor the Mystic River, and ultimately, those who control it. Patrick explained how he's part of an operation that monitors different kinds of bacteria, pollutants, and invasive plants from ruining a body of water that serves an area over eight times its size. 
With large scale, super expensive sensors as well as smaller basic ones, Patrick and the MyRWA use science to fix problems, engage the community, and change policy. These aren't immediately conquerable feats, however. These three things directly effect each other, and if one piece doesn't happen, the other two don't either. What this means is that sometimes it's difficult to get the community involved in crowd sourcing. If there aren't many people on board to help source this information, it makes presenting issues to government agencies much harder, and thus, makes it harder to fix the actual problem. Luckily throughout the years, Patrick said that most of the time the community is very passionate about revitalizing the Mystic River and does help to volunteer taking samples of water or cleaning up water chestnuts, to name a few ways they engage people. 
Though this sounds like more of a scientific operation journalism does play a pivotal role here. The MyRWA has a massive amount of publication in the Globe, Boston Herald, U.S. EPA online, and so many local news organizations as well as their own news letter and blog about their recent doings. They have had a lot of success impacting the watershed because of sensor journalism specifically.
Sensor journalism and data gathering does go on beyond testing water samples, thankfully, and Lily Bui helped explain that with her slideshow on sensor journalism. Lily broke sensor journalism down into seven sensing categories: individual sensing, group sensing, existing sensor networks, smart cities, mobile sensing, remote sensing, and wearables.
These categories represent how data can be collected for personal use, commercial use, and social use, with many of them being popularly employed already across the country and others on the rise. For example, lets think about how mobile sensing and wearables have been in homes since the 1980s and people probably still don't realize the power of data collection that they actually are producing. According to a 2013 study done by Business Insider, 22% of people worldwide own a smartphone. This number has probably increased every years with the newest phones dropping on the market. These phones are capable of bluetooth radio, wifi radio, GPS, dual side cameras, among other amazing features found on a device the size of a deck of cards.
In addition to the phones, however, many of these wearable sensors sync up with smart phones to produce location data, biometric and health data, performance data, and anything else associated to the individual wearing it. The most amazing part is that all of this can be collected by doing absolutely nothing. 
Sensor journalism does present so many opportunities for storytelling and open sourcing data for all to consume, but it's also wise to be careful and consider obstacles when in the process. The Tow Report helps shed light on some things to take away based on the experiences of others while using sensor journalism to tell their stories. Perhaps the most important take-away in this report is while in the process, to be absolutely mindful of accuracy, interpretation, and representativeness. 
Accuracy is part of the journalist's (with the exception of Brian Williams) creed while reporting in any fashion, but with a sensor, it's more complex of a way to collect data. It's wise to take extra precaution to correctly calibrate and check specs before use to avoid any misdatafication. Interpretation and representation are just as important from an analytical perspective in reading data. As we have talked about so many times, we think about correlation, not causation. As long a we can take these and many other things into account while using sensors in the field, we could potentially have all the data w'll ever need at our fingertips.